Thursday, October 25, 2012

Chris Stokes - iExamen 2

I chose to do the second
iExamen project today, October 24th. In this assignment, we were
asked to speak only with words that are kind, useful, and truthful. Despite the
fact that these instructions seemed to reflect actions that should feel
natural, I found that I was much less comfortable than I had anticipated. More than anything, this project made me
realize how sarcastic I can be. Aside from my initial discomfort, I really
enjoyed this project and was able to learn many things from it.

The first legitimate
interaction I had today was at lunch with my two friends, Matt and Ryan. I saw
them immediately when I walked into Boulder, went to say hello and thought to
myself, “is ‘hello’ kind, useful, or truthful?” This is when I realized it was
going to be a long day. After coming to the conclusion that hello is a kind
thing to say, I greeted my friends and we began our small talk. This is where I
had trouble. Throughout our conversation, I had to stop myself from making many
sarcastic comments. I do not remember any specifically, but I do remember
feeling very restricted with what I could and could not say. I even remember,
at one point, my friend Matt laughing and asking me “What are you doing?” I
explained to both of them that I was trying to only say things that are kind,
useful, and truthful for an English project and they just laughed more. They
knew how much I was struggling. Maybe this is just me trying to reassure
myself, but one minor flaw that I found with this project for myself is that
being a sarcastic person is not necessarily a bad thing. There were so many
things that I went to say that I did not consider to be kind, useful, and
truthful, but at the same time, I would definitely not consider them mean or
hurtful.

Another thing that I found
a little uncomfortable was having to be truthful at all times. I am not saying
that I am a liar, but the occasional fib can be way easier than telling the
truth. One example of this could be when my friend Mike texted me while I was
at lunch. Mike goes to LeMoyne College in Syracuse so what he had to say could
not have been an emergency, and even if it was, there would not be anything I
could do for him. Therefore, I chose to continue eating my lunch and wait to read
and respond to his text. When I went to respond to his text later on in the
day, however, I naturally went to say something along the lines of “Oh sorry, I
thought I responded to this before.” To me, this would not have been a bad lie,
but according to the project, I had to be truthful. I then told him the real
story, which was much longer than the text I wanted to send, but he really did
not seem to care.

A little later on in the
day, I began to feel more comfortable with the assignment and saw that I, for
the first time in a long time, was only saying kind, useful, and truthful
things. Because of how difficult I found this project earlier in the day, I was
amazed. My conversations no longer seemed so awkward and I did not have to
pause to think about everything that I was about to say. At this point, most of
my friends knew about the project and were very entertained. They found it
funny because I was not acting like myself.

This project was very
interesting and taught me many things about others and myself. While this was
intended to be a self-reflective exercise, I couldn’t help noticing how often
other people say things that don’t fit the criteria of being kind, useful, and
truthful. I was not able to tell when people were not being truthful, but as I
was focusing on following the instructions, I became very conscious of how many
times my friends would say things that were not kind or useful.